Ashbane stood at the edge of a dying leyline.
Beneath his claws, the ground bubbled with warped flame—a heat that no longer radiated warmth, but memory decay. The leyline, once a sacred artery of the Flame Network, pulsed like a dying vein. In its glow, Ashbane saw what others feared to look at:
Dragons screaming in reverse—their lives unraveling.
> [Blight Effect: Memory Burn Field]
Target: Flameborne Entities
Radius: 1.4 miles
Result: Partial cognitive regression
Collateral: Bloodline Signature Nullification
He dragged his claw through the dirt. Instead of ash or smoke, the line he drew left a void. A silence in the world's soul.
He didn't just burn.
He unwrote.
---
A voice echoed in his skull—not the system, not his prey.
Her.
The Blight whispered not in dominance, but in invitation. It didn't demand control. It didn't make threats. It offered something worse.
It offered release.
> "No past. No pain."
"No chains of names or blood."
"Only now. Only power."
"Let go, Kyranox."
Ashbane trembled.
He hadn't heard his birth-name in cycles.
He lashed his tail, cleaving a granite outcrop in two. But the whisper returned—not pleading, not demanding—just persistent.
He was becoming what dragons feared most: not destruction, but the forgetting of fire.
---
Meanwhile…
In the far mountains of the Zehrak range, elder dragons began evacuating their hatcheries.
Flameforges sealed their vaults. Spiritbinders unhooked soul-flames from their ancestral totems and fled underground. The stars over the northern sky dimmed—not from clouds, but from the advance of an aura they couldn't name.
One elder, blind from age, whispered to his kin:
> "I feel him.
The Tyrant That Does Not Roar."
"He's pulling the world inward. Like breath before death."
They called it Ashbane's Silence.
And it was spreading.
---
Return to Ashbane
He wandered deeper into the caverns—no longer to expand, but to digest what remained.
Dragon carcasses hung from the walls, still whispering their final thoughts in his mind. He didn't always remember killing them. But he remembered the taste of their essence—flavors of ambition, pride, sorrow.
He no longer hunted for survival.
He hunted for identity.
Every Sovereign he consumed slowed the rot of his own mind. Not stopped it—just stretched it.
But the worst part?
Some part of him was starting to like the forgetting.
---
He stepped into the central chamber—The Mawforge.
This was the origin point of the Blight. A crater once formed by the self-detonation of a mythic drake who tried to end evolution itself. The drake had failed. His soul had become an ember that never died.
Ashbane consumed it.
Now the Mawforge pulsed like a black heart, glowing with an anti-flame—a fire that did not burn, but devoured the ability to ignite.
> [Mawforge Core Stabilized]
Sync: 96%
Feature: Anti-System Pulse
Effect: Disrupts evolutionary triggers within 12-mile radius
Side Effect: Mutation Spiral – 73% Progress
Status: You are becoming more than dragon.
Classification Shift Pending: [???]
---
Ashbane growled softly.
More than dragon.
More than god.
More than memory.
And yet… not free.
Still chained.
To the whisper.
To the system's remnants.
To the one name that hadn't faded from his mind.
> Ember.
---
Ashbane conjured an image in the flame—a warped scry of soulfire that showed Ember in real time, wings glowing with controlled wrath, preparing a squad of young drakes and Sovereign-touched elders. Ember's eyes were focused. Clear.
Too clear.
Ashbane snarled, the sound hollow.
> "He doesn't understand.
He's still fighting for something.
Still dragging that corpse of a world behind him like a chain."
He leaned in close, nose nearly brushing the flickering vision.
> "Let me break it for you."
And then… the image flickered.
Ember looked up. Through the vision. Through the connection.
And locked eyes with him.
Just for a second.
A ripple of heat surged between the two visions—then shattered.
> [Alert: Soul Resonance Breach Detected]
Counterforce: Ember (Soul Integrity 92%)
Effect: Trace Lock Failed
Result: Blight Reaction – Triggered
Instability Increased.
---
Ashbane reeled back, breathing smoke and memory. His chest pulsed with too many hearts, too many timelines. Souls within him howled in rage—or was it regret?
He slammed his claws into the Mawforge stone.
Not to break it.
To anchor himself.
He whispered—again, not in power, but in pain.
> "Why do I still remember his name?"
And from the far end of the cavern, from a pit of anti-light…
A voice that was his replied:
> "Because he is what you could have been."
---
Ashbane stood, shaking.
And laughed. A sick, hollow sound that didn't echo.
> "Then I will end him.
And end what I could've been."
"That way, there will be… only one story left."
---
System Fragment – Hidden Thread Unlocked
Memory Core: Kyranox – Last Dream Before Blight
> "Fire isn't just destruction."
"It's memory. Heat passed down."
"The breath of ancestors. The roar of defiance."
"As long as fire remembers… we are never truly alone."
He had said that.
Once.
When his wings were golden.
When he flew not to dominate, but to light the skies.
The memory drifted.
Then shriveled.
Then vanished.
---
Ashbane turned to his legion of Blightspawn.
Now numbering over 300.
And counting.
He opened his maw—and this time, did not roar.
He whispered.
> "March."
And they moved.
Silent. Obedient. Hungry.
---
Meanwhile at the other side
The forge-hall was quiet. Not because it lacked heat—but because every dragon within was listening.
Ember stood before them, larger than he had been even a week ago. His wings were no longer the vibrant gold-red of a hatchling, but a deeper, smoldering crimson veined with silver flame. The marks on his horns pulsed with synchronized heat—evidence of his bond to the Forgeflame Core, an ancient system node reawakened through fire-rite.
He'd completed his second molt two days ago.
He was no longer a Wyrmling.
He was Drake-class, Adult Tier—sovereign-touched.
But size and strength alone would not save them.
Not against Ashbane.
---
> "The Blight grows by the hour," Ember said, his voice echoing through the vaulted obsidian dome. "We've lost six hatchery nests in the north. Pyrewood is gone. The Silverwing flightlines are gone. Entire legacies—forgotten."